The Art Angle

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Re-Air: The Rise of the Red Chip Art World Jul 03, 2025

Show notes

When we first aired this episode about red chip art a few months back, it captured a cultural and art market phenomenon hiding in plain sight. My colleague Annie Armstrong mapped out a world of Cybertrucks, crypto wallets, and Alec Monopoly openings—a bro-filled art scene where KAWS, MSCHF, and Daniel Arsham are the mainstays, and where spectacle often outpaces substance.

Then Adrien Brody had an art show.

This summer, at Eden Gallery in New York, the Oscar-winning actor unveiled his solo exhibition "Made in America," including a body of work that dives headfirst into the visual language of red-chip art. The show includes mixed-media paintings with portraits of Marilyn Monroe, and there are also Basquiat-inspired crowns, rats, and images of Mickey Mouse. There’s even a participatory element that involves audience members sticking their used chewing gum on the gallery wall. Brody's maximalist, pop-culture salad seems tailor-made for virality, sure—but reactions in the art world have been quite mixed.

Some see Brody’s exhibition as a genuine creative endeavor; but others view it as a high-profile example of what happens when celebrity, commerce, and art collide in an already hype-driven market. Some don't mind the celebrity aspect but think it is just bad painting. Either way, what’s certain is that Brody isn’t just dabbling in this so-called red chip art world sphere—he’s fully committed and he is now the new face of it— in all of its chrome-coated, algorithm-charmed aesthetic.

In honor of the buzz surrounding "Made in America," we’re re-airing our episode on red chip art. In it, I spoke to Annie about the phenomenon, exploring how social media, speculation, and celebrity culture are reshaping a corner of the art world that often defies traditional critical frameworks. Whether you see it as democratizing or dystopian, red chip art is impossible to ignore.

The Round-Up: Tech’d Out Museums, Art Basel Takeaways, and Adrien Brody's Awesomely Awful Art Jun 26, 2025

Show notes

It’s the end of June. It’s hot. And it’s time to take a look back at the hot art stories of the last month.

Today the Art Angle team has picked out three items. On the agenda:

—The announcement of a brand new, ambitious museum-like art venue, Canyon, dedicated to immersive video art, on the Lower East Side. We'll also talk about the general state of immersive art attractions.

—What went down at Art Basel, the big Swiss art fair that is the art industry’s most important event, and the ongoing chaos in art prices.

—And finally, the Oscar-winning actor Adrien Brody’s painting show in New York City, which has everyone talking—or at least, tittering.

Culture editor Min Chen joins art critic Ben Davis and Artnet senior editor—and Art Angle co-host—Kate Brown to talk about it all.

Why Does Culture Feel Stuck? Jun 19, 2025

Show notes

The Los Angeles–based trend forecaster and writer Sean Monahan is known for his sharp takes on the zeitgeist. Over the past decade, his cultural insights have routinely gone viral—most famously when he coined the term “vibe shift,” a phrase that quickly spread from niche corners of the internet to mainstream outlets like The New York Times and The Guardian. In the early 2010s, he co-founded the trend-forecasting collective K-HOLE with Greg Fong, Sean Monahan, Chris Sherron, Emily Segal, and Dena Yago. Though short-lived, their reports had an outsized influence on the cultural sphere, best known for popularizing the term “normcore”—a concept that began in the art world and ended up becoming a household world an era of anti-style.

Today, Monahan runs 8Ball, his cult-favorite newsletter on Substack that decodes contemporary aesthetics, social dynamics, tech, and the subtle undercurrents of change. If you want to understand why things look, feel, and behave the way they do right now—his writing is essential.

Senior Editor Kate Brown spoke with Sean about his own journey from art school to consulting for brands, and how that path informs his view of the present moment. They discussed institutional decay, the legacy of post-internet art, generational shifts, and the persistent sense that culture has entered a holding pattern. He also offered thoughts on why the 2020s—after several false starts—may finally be congealing into a definable decade.

How Does an Emerging Gallery Make It Now? Jun 12, 2025

Show notes

We’re on the cusp of the 2025 edition of Art Basel—the flagship fair held each June in Basel, Switzerland. More than 200 galleries from around the world gather to present works spanning the 20th and 21st centuries. Art Basel is both a bellwether and a battleground. Participation is prestigious—and costly. It’s competitive, and it’s high-stakes.

That’s always been true. What’s newer is the softening of the art market. Sales are down. Demand is cautious. Buying patterns are shifting. “Uncertainty” was the word last year—and it still is.

Much of the focus tends to fall on the top of the market. But what about the emerging tier? The galleries selling works under $250,000 and $100,000? The ones spotting and raising new talent, pushing aesthetics forward? What does a “win” look like for them in this moment? What does growth mean now—and how do they survive in a contracting ecosystem?

To unpack these questions, Senior Editor Kate Brown is joined by three dealers whose programs I’ve followed closely over the years. Their perspectives offer a real-time snapshot of what’s at stake.

On the podcast with us is Robbie Fitzpatrick, of Fitzpatrick Gallery, a dealer who has operated galleries in Los Angeles and Paris, and who recently decided to take his gallery program nomadic. Robbie also founded Art Basel Social Club in 2022, an annual event that has become a defiant and central alternative during the week in Basel. This year, the edition is bigger than ever and takes place in a formidable location of a former bank in the center of the city.

Kate is also joined by Lisa Offermann, founder of the gallery LC Queisser. Lisa opened the gallery in 2018 in Tbilisi, Georgia, and launched a second location in Cologne earlier this year. She’s participated in several editions of Art Basel and is part of its newest sector, Premiere, this year.

Freddie Powell, founder of Ginny on Frederick, is also on the show—Freddie opened in London in 2020. With a sharp program and quick ascent, the gallery is making its debut at Art Basel this year, in both Basel and in Paris in the fall.

The Art World's Octopus Teacher Jun 05, 2025

Show notes

Have you ever asked yourself: What do artists have to learn from the octopus? Maybe not—but the question is at the heart of the work of Miriam Simun, who currently has an exhibition about her Institute for Transhumanist Cephalopod Evolution at the art space Recess in Brooklyn. And it turns out the answer is mind-expanding. Almost literally.

Simun’s unusual art practice can be seen as part of a serious trend in recent years of artists exploring non-human thought of all kinds in the hopes of shifting our troubled relationship to the natural world. The centerpiece of Simun's show at Recess is a series of workshops titled “How to Become an Octopus (and sometime squid).” For these, the artist guides participants through a two-hour program of “psycho-physical” exercises she has developed over many years through collaborations with marine biologists, engineers, dancers, and synchronized swimmers.

She’s taught the method all over the world, and the description says the classes are “open to anyone curious about cephalopods, new ways of sensing, and expanding the definition of self”—an audience which included me. Art Critic Ben Davis got in there to explore his cephalopod side, and for this week's Art Angle, he talks about Simun’s art and what he took away from his experience in her workshop.

A Crypto Billionaire's Lawsuit, Koons’s Hulk Blasts Back,' the Art Basel Awards May 29, 2025

Show notes

It's been a minute, but we're back with our Round-Up episode, where we parse and discuss some of the biggest stories going on around the art world, and it's really good to be back into this format again after a little commercial break.

A lot has been happening lately in the so-called art world—good, bad, and there's been plenty of in-between that—but it remains as colorful, contradictory, and chaotic as ever.

We'll be diving into crypto collector Justin Sun’s escalating legal battle with Blue Chip Titan David Geffen over a long-nosed Giacometti sculpture; a trio of massive Hulk sculptures by Jeff Koons that descended on Frieze New York a couple of weeks ago—these big green bellwethers for the state of the market are in play; and finally, we'll look at some of the major developments at Art Basel, including the launch of its very first art award. Senior Editor Kate Brown is joined by co-host, art critic Ben Davis, and Artnet News Pro Editor Andrew Russeth.

The New Rules of Subculture May 22, 2025

Show notes

There is nothing that Artnet’s Art Critic Ben Davis likes better than finding a name for a phenomenon that’s all around him, but that he doesn’t have a name for yet. The writer and theorist Nadia Asparouhova has a new book out that offered exactly this. It’s called Antimemetics: Why Some Ideas Resist Spreading.

We tend to think of cultural influence as being tied to popularity and visibility. What Asparouhova wants us to pay attention to is a whole other class of cultural stuff whose influence is linked instead to being hard to find or difficult to understand. These are what she calls “anti-memes.”

It’s the opinion puts you at odds with some people but really connects you to others, so you’re careful how you share it. It’s the artwork that looks like nonsense to the majority of the audience but is full of intricate meaning to fans.

The theory of "anti-memes” is about how some of our most intense cultural investments are below the radar—not because they haven’t been found yet, but because that’s how they are built.

All this touches on themes that a lot of artists have been thinking about. Asparouhova’s book, in fact, is published by a group of artists and thinkers called the Dark Forest Collective, named after writer Yancey Strickler’s idea of the internet as a “dark forest,” a space that has become so contentious and commercial that the smart people retreat to more private digital spaces for authenticity and cachet. Asparouhova’s book helps focus in on the question of how difficult ideas and art that’s not built to go viral survive and find real fans now.

How to Curate a Life: Lessons From 3 Art World Tastemakers May 15, 2025

Show notes

Spring art week just wrapped in New York City. Known for its extravagant floral displays and signature oysters and champagne, TEFAF is the fair with a vibe. This year, 91 exhibitors from 13 countries presented everything from antiquities to modern and contemporary art and design at the stately Park Avenue Armory. There’s a real sense of passion here— dealers are eager to share the stories behind their works.

Which brings us to today’s episode, recorded live at the Thrill of the Chase panel with three very different cultural omnivores who personify Tefaf’s ethos which span centuries and styles. Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn‘s gallery Salon 94, has long blurred the lines between art and design. Housed in a Beaux-Arts townhouse on the Upper East Side she has presented everything from Rick Owens furniture to the recent Kennedy Yanko solo exhibitions. Adam Charlap Hyman, co-founder of Charlap Hyman & Herrero, brings a sweeping vision to interiors, furniture, architecture, and opera sets. He also curates, most recently Glass Subjects at R & Company which is currently on view. Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, Curator of Contemporary Design at the Cooper Hewitt, began her career in literature before turning to storytelling through objects. Her work explores symbolism, inclusion, and cultural memory.

Together, they explore what makes an object irresistible. Is it beauty, rarity—or the story it tells? In this conversation, Artnet Studio's William Van Meter dig into the thrill of discovery, the elusive “X factor,” and how great objects help shape layered narratives.

How Painters Today Are Reframing… the Frame May 08, 2025

Show notes

Almost by definition, the frame of a picture is something that you are not supposed to notice.

But if you go to the art galleries to look at paintings now, you might get a very different sense of what a frame can or even should do. Weird and wild frames that very much draw attention to themselves seem to be having a moment.

Recently, Artnet writer and editor Katie White penned a piece titled Bordercore: Why Frames Became the New Frontier in Contemporary Art.

In her essay, she looks both at the history of framing styles, and talks to a number of contemporary painters to figure out what is causing so many to treat something that was literally considered peripheral to what they do as very much part of the main attraction. This week she joins Art Critic Ben Davis on the podcast to discuss this new frontier in art.

Megastar Artist Kent Monkman Is Rewriting Colonial Narratives on Canvas May 01, 2025

Show notes

Kent Monkman is one of the most vital and provocative voices in contemporary painting. Based between Toronto and New York, and a member of the Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory, Monkman is known for his epic, genre-bending canvases that challenge dominant historical narratives and reframe them through Indigenous and queer perspectives.

Monkman has developed a distinctive visual language that subverts classical European art traditions—particularly those of 19th-century and 20th-century history painting—to expose the distortions and omissions of colonial narratives. His work blends these European conventions with Indigenous histories, recontextualizing colonization while exploring themes of resilience, sexuality, joy, and identity.

At the center of many of these works is Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, Monkman’s time-traveling alter ego. Clad in high heels, Miss Chief operates as both a trickster figure and a witness to colonial encounters, embodying Indigenous worldviews and queering history in a way that destabilizes settler-colonial perspectives. Through Miss Chief, Monkman reimagines historical events, placing Indigenous presence and agency at the forefront.

Monkman’s large-scale commissions include mistikôsiwak (Wooden Boat People), a pair of monumental paintings created for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2019, which directly confronted the institution’s colonial legacies. His work has been exhibited in major museums across North America and Europe, and is part of significant public and private collections.

As his first major U.S. museum exhibition, "History is Painted by the Victors," opens at the Denver Art Museum, Monkman joined me to reflect on the road to this moment—a journey that spans decades of challenging entrenched narratives in Western art history. We spoke about how growing up in Winnipeg, amidst the complexities of Indigenous representation in Canadian institutions, shaped his relationship to museums; how painting serves as both a political tool and a personal method for processing historical trauma; and the collaborative energy that fuels his expansive studio practice.

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